I love roasting coffee. It’s a mindful activity. At the same time, I use it as an opportunity to listen to podcasts and watch YouTube videos related to branding, marketing, and social media. One of my favorite people to read and listen to is Gary Vaynerchuk (known as Gary Vee). I watched several episodes yesterday while roasting where he was interviewed. Throughout the interview, he covered a wide variety of topics, from social media to marketing. But something he shared stopped me in my tracks …
It was almost three years ago when I sold Loam Coffee. I started Loam in 2015 and ran it for five years. Feeling burned out and needing a change of pace, I broke the company into two pieces and sold each part. With great relief, I moved on and threw myself into other endeavors and startups. But I couldn’t shake Loam Coffee.
Someone once quipped that being in a rut is like a coffin with the ends kicked out. Meaning, we’re stuck and it becomes soul-sucking. A slow plodding march to the grave. It can happen to anyone. We get in a groove, a routine, and before we know it we succumb to living in the monotony and mundaneness of the ordinary. Even the extraordinary can become ordinary without variety. That’s why pro racers need an off-season to rest (momentarily) and pursue other things that light their fires. We can’t be “on” 24/7 otherwise we’ll find ourselves in this rut … and we’re enveloped. Swallowed alive. The worst kind of death.
Whether we live in cities or in rural communities we’re tied to the land. Terra firma. No, that doesn’t mean we’re all farmers, ranchers, or loggers. We’re grounded in a topography. A geography. Even in urban studies when I teach university courses on the city we explore this notion of a city’s site and situation. We talk about topography, geography, climate, resources, and more. It influences us in the city … the rain and lush forests of the Pacific Northwest … the sun, heat, and arroyos of the Southwest. We’re tied to the land.
Riders. That is who we are. We could argue and say that we are defined by our particular riding disciplines, but when it all comes down to it, we share the same desire for dirt. So what is so special about two wheels and a set of handlebars? Why do we crave for just a few hours a day on some short singletrack? Why do we fantasize about burly rock gardens instead of planting our own? There has got to be something more going on here.
In our frenetic world there is a cacophony of information, messages, data, images, media, and voices bombarding us all at once. We're regularly told "do this," "buy this," "wear this," and so on. We usually deploy some kind of filtering system to wade through the noise so we can breathe easily. Interestingly, companies are the same. What we long for, personally or as a business is this, simplicity.
